My typical week at FrieslandCampina would start at 8.30 am every Monday morning. The team would gather together for 1 hour and a half to discuss each other’s work phase and obstacles at work. Since there is a colleague based in Singapore, the meeting usually needs to start early. However, the covid situation had led most of our work to be done online, the collaboration within the team was not easy to handle. After the Monday group meeting, I would start to review all the emails that I have received and sorted out the priority. Usually a day was combined with multiple meetings.
Every Thursday, the whole company tried to have an office day in Amersfoort where is 40 minutes by train from where I live. That was how the social networking and normal small talks could happen. We were able to discuss work face to face and have lunch at the canteen belonging to the company. At the end of Thursday, some people would choose to grab a drink after work in a bar next to the train station since the most of the colleagues were residing in other cities. Especially our intern community, we would hang out to talk about our confusion at work or just catch up with each other.
Things could be more chill on Fridays as some people didn’t even work on this day. I would review what had been done within the past week and if there was anything to be prepared before the group meeting on Monday. Since we had been collaborating with Qualtrics and their employees were based in the United States, our communication took hours to accomplish due to the time difference. That is why it is important to keep an eye on the email inbox in case of quickly pumped in questions.
Some interesting events were taking place alongside my internship. There was a Pride quiz at the beginning of June since that was the Pride month. Besides, singing contests, skating competition are also being held as a part of company culture.
During my internship, a number of issues were going on around the world. The war between Russia and Ukraine has triggered the inflation which is affecting company’s business decisions and the lockdown situations in several countries made business dynamic still complicated. I got to realise how the worldwide scenarios can affect company’s daily execution and ordinary people’s livelihood.